Religion

Cops Accuse Christian Commune of Abusing and Raping Children

VICE 7/23/17

On Sunday, police arrested current and former members of a Christian group in New Mexico for a litany of alleged crimes. According to a report on Monday by ABC affiliate KOAT-7 Action News, one member was charged with 100 counts of sexual penetration of a girl who was allegedly smuggled into this country from Uganda. The warrant used to make the arrest, which was viewed by VICE, further claims the group concealed the births of multiple children and the death of at least one boy, whose remains were buried on the group’s private property.

The Return of Exorcisms as Healthcare

VICE 7/11/17

Throughout history and in faiths beyond just Christianity, demonic possession has been a common misdiagnosis for all kinds of ailments. In retrospect, it is often revealed that many of these people suffer from disorders like schizophrenia or epilepsy. Regardless of the true underlying medical issues, some religious figures perform exorcisms today like the one McClellan went through. While McClellan’s exorcism left her with lasting psychological damage that took years of therapy to overcome, exorcisms can be even more disastrous and potentially fatal. In recent years, stories of exorcisms involving people being beaten, poisoned, stomped, and starved to death have made global headlines.

Free Will is an Illusion, says Neurobiologist

VICE 5/24/17

There is no concept more American than “free will”—the idea that we’re all gifted (probably by God) with the power to choose a path of success or destruction and bear responsibility for the resulting consequences. It’s the whole reason we “punish” people for committing crimes. The idea is so ubiquitous that most people have never even pondered an alternative.

Neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky sees things differently. He’s opposed to the concept of “free will.” Instead, he believes that our behavior is made up of a complex and chaotic soup of so many factors that it’s downright silly to think there’s a singular, autonomous “you” calling the shots.

Needing Proof to Believe in Jesus Means You Have No Faith

VICE 4/15/17

If it could be proven that Jesus never rose from the dead after he was brutally crucified, would that be the end of Christianity? Journalist Lee Strobel seemed to think so in 1980 when he spent two years of his life attempting to debunk the resurrection myth in order to save his wife from her new-found Christianity. It’s a dramatic tale of theology and marriage that was chronicled in the bestselling book, The Case for Christ, and a newly released film from the evangelical production company, Pure Flix.

The Contentious Relationship Between Evangelicals and Hollywood

VICE 5/19/17

Controversy surrounding The Shack represents the inevitable clash between America’s millions of evangelicals and Hollywood’s army of liberal-minded producers, two adversaries brought together by mutual economic interests without ever moving their culture-war battle lines.

​Why Are So Many Horror Films Christian Propaganda?

VICE 10/18/16

When it comes to Christian propaganda films, most people think of the obnoxious God’s Not Dead, or Nic Cage’s get-me-out-of-IRS-debt Left Behind—critically reviled assaults on the secular world that occasionally make a lot of money. But there’s another genre that seems to have the same proselytizing agenda that champions Christianity and demonizes all other faiths (including the faithless): horror movies.

Every year we endure more of these predictably edited, laughably plotted thrillers centered around a young girl foolishly toying with the tools of Satan (usually a Ouija Board), becoming possessed by a demon, and then being exorcised by a priest who was struggling with his faith but now sees the error of rational thinking.

The kids of Jesus Camp, 10 years later: ‘Was it child abuse? Yes and no’

The Guardian 6/6/16

Ten-year-old Andrew Sommerkamp, with his shy demeanor and floppy blond hair, mounts the stage of the Kids On Fire church camp, and nervously tells the crowd that he’s struggling with his belief in God. He’d spent days watching his fellow Christian campers weep uncontrollably, repenting and begging God’s forgiveness, and he has a confession to share.

“I just want to talk about belief in God … I’ve been having a hard time with it,” he says, staring at the ground, scared and confused as the other kids look around at each other with anxiety in their eyes. “To believe in God is hard because you don’t see him, you don’t know him much. Sometimes I don’t even believe what the Bible says. It makes me a faker, it makes me feel guilty and bad.

Ten years later, Sommerkamp (yes, that’s his real name) has abandoned evangelical Christianity, living with a group of spiritual seekers in Mount Shasta, California. His split from the evangelical world happening when his father came out as gay. He says he spent several years angry at the church, but has since discovered peace in eastern mysticism, quantum mechanics, and psychotropic drugs.

Apocalyptic upbringing: how I recovered from my terrifying evangelical childhood

The Guardian 4/5/16

One stormy night in the summer of 1992, I walked down the basement steps of my parents’ house to await the apocalypse. The Iowa air was thick with humidity, the ominous green sky prophesying a tornado. My 10-year-old hands trembled as I laid out my inventory: animal crackers, juice boxes, a Bible, and every sharp knife in the kitchen.

My parents were home late and my first thought was that they’d been raptured up to heaven. I was a sinner who had been left behind to face the Earth’s destruction.

Would Jesus Celebrate Christmas?

VICE 12/24/15

The holidays wouldn’t be the same without a “war on Christmas.” The annual embittered pleas from evangelicals to “keep Christ in Christmas” have now become as much of a holiday tradition as caroling or “planning” to volunteer at a homeless shelter. Waiting all year to find out what fabricated moment of anti-Jesus discrimination has virally incensed Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh (Starbucks cups? Bet you didn’t see that one coming!) now fills me with the same narcotic anticipation as freshly wrapped presents did when I was a child.

While I admire their enduring tenacity and ceaseless creativity in keeping this up each year, I can’t help but wonder if at some point in their pursuit of a homogenous holiday if they ever stop to wonder: Would Jesus celebrate Christmas?

Considering that the holiday wasn’t even developed until centuries after Jesus’s death, and went through endless mutations, and has been protested by Christians as often as it has been protested by atheists, it’s difficult to know how J.C. would feel about his birthday bonanza.

A Look Back at ‘Marjoe,’ the 1972 Documentary About Evangelical Con Men

VICE 10/23/14

Marjoe is the story of an abused child preacher who grows up to become an Evangelical con man, living a double life as a dope-smoking, girl-chasing hippie in LA. The documentary went on to win the 1972 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and earned massive amounts of critical acclaim. But despite the accolades and outrageous story, the film was only played in a handful of theaters on the coasts and was never screened below the Bible Belt. It was eventually forgotten and thought to be lost for good due to the only known copy being badly damaged. However, in 2002, the original negative was rediscovered and the film was released three years later on DVD, introducing Marjoe to a new generation with a greater appetite for films that were critical of religious institutions.

Cake Wars: The Christian Jihad On Gay Dessert

VICE 1/29/15

As same-sex marriage inches closer toward legalization nationwide, bakeries have emerged as an unlikely new battleground for those opposed to marriage equality.Attempting to mirror anti-discrimination rulings against bakeries that refuse service to gay couples, activists have been contacting LGBT-affirming bakeries requesting custom cakes frosted with anti-gay slogans. When the bakeries decline, the customer claims religious discrimination.

In the most recent incident, Colorado resident Bill Jack filed a religious discrimination complaint with the state’s civil rights office, after Denver’s Azucar Bakery refusing to make a Bible-shaped cake decorated with two-men holding hands, covered by an “X.” The bakery’s owner, Marjorie Silva, told Out Front Colorado that she offered to “bake the cake in the shape of a Bible, and then I told him I’d sell him a [decorating] bag with the right tip and the right icing so he could write those things himself.”

Why isn’t Rastafari A Respected Religion?

The Cannabist 11/26/14

At a time when western society is becoming increasingly sensitive to appropriation of American Indian cultures in sports (Washington Redskins) and pop music (Flaming Lips), and eagerly cries foul at any white person costumed as a foreign minority, we are still living in a minstrel-show culture when it comes to the “No problem, mon” depiction of Rastafarians. Ironically, this gap in the PC protocol is an extension of the most successful tool white colonists have used to subjugate black people in both the U.S. and Jamaica’s post-slavery societies: Anti-marijuana propaganda.

The same campaigns that have convinced society that potheads can’t be taken seriously have also led the world to believe that Rastafari is not a real religion, and therefore undeserving of the same reverence and respect we give to other beliefs and traditions.

Satanism and Guilt-Free Murder in Iowa

VICE 8/19/14

On the evening of July 18, 2013, Kathy Barlas returned to her home in Mason City, Iowa, to find her adult son waiting in the garage in his underwear, dripping with blood. “Mom, I killed Satan,” Tom Barlas Jr. said to his mother. Did he mean he hurt the dog? “No, Mom, I killed Satan,” he repeated. Kathy entered the house, heading toward her bedroom where she found her husband, Tom Barlas Sr., lifeless on the floor, bleeding from multiple stab wounds. He was dead.

When she returned to the garage, her son was gone. Calling 911, Kathy told the emergency operator that her son might be headed toward the Greek Orthodox Church of Transfiguration. The police eventually found Barlas, who resisted arrest, repeating “God and Jesus Christ,” over and over. The cops used their tasers to subdue him, eventually arresting Barlas for the first degree murder of his father.

From Suicide To Salvation, How One Closeted Minister Became An LGBT Hero

Westword 11/28/13

Reverend Brian Henderson is sitting stiffly in a hospital bed, awaiting another visit from the doctor who will ask if he still wants to kill himself.

Henderson is unshaven, his eyes red. He hardly slept the night before and does not know what he will tell the doctor when the time comes. Typically the picture of clean, confident leadership as the minister of Calvary Baptist Church, Henderson is known as the man with the answers, the cornerstone of support and guidance for both his congregation and his family. But Henderson has a secret, a secret he’s held on to for decades, one that threatens the life he knows, one that threatens to make him take his own life. And now, in March 2012, the secret has started to leak out.

Sexuality In The Religions Of The World

Out Front Colorado 12/4/12

Sigmund Freud once said, “the behavior of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.” That suggests that many religions hands-off approach to sex – feel free to take that phrase figuratively or literally – has been a serious disservice to our moral and spiritual guidance. As the supposed guideposts for spirituality – the instructive link between mortal humans and the divine – religious institutions have forever struggled with the question of how to deal with sex.

Take a look at any of the dozens of major religions today and it won’t be long before you find dead-ends of denial and repression. Some beliefs hoist this banner proudly, while others pay less lip service to their ancient texts commandments of who you are allowed to share your body with.

O Scum All Ye Faithful: Five Iron Frenzy’s Denver Church

Westword 12/25/10

Tucked behind a 7-Eleven and a liquor store, a historic church building rises above the Santa Fe art district. Commissioned in 1881 by former Colorado territorial governor Alexander Hunt, the building was once owned and restored by artist Lonnie Hanzon; you enter through a 300-year-old antique door from Paris, then pass under a cosmically decorated ceiling. The under-the-sea-meets-Mardi Gras-in-space theme continues through the bathrooms and hallways, but it co-exists comfortably with the current occupants. One large room holds scattered rows of chairs and a handful of musical instruments strewn about the far end; two upstairs bedrooms are home to a handful of young crust punks; the garage outside hosts a free bicycle workshop every Sunday afternoon.

This is the new base of the Scum of the Earth Church, a radical group of Christian outcasts hoping their brand of spirituality will find a home here, in a place where they can shed the stereotypes of being both Christians and punk-rockers. In the ten years since its inception, Scum members have congregated in everything from basements to coffeehouses to rented churches to homeless shelters. “Sometimes it’s felt like sleeping on someone’s couch for too long,” says Mike Sares, Scum’s 56-year-old senior pastor. Though he’s comfortable in his church’s new home, which Scum purchased in September 2008, he’s quick to point out that owning a building was never the goal. “The church is the people, not the building,” he says.